FCC: Still No TV Station Outages Related To Hurricane Harvey

No TV station had been knocked off the air by Hurricane Harvey as of midday Sunday (Aug. 27). That is according to the FCC's second update on the status of communications based on info from communications providers to its voluntary Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS).

The storm was being described as a thousand-year flood event, with as much as 50 inches of rain predicted in Houston and a couple of feet north of that.

DIRS is a web-based system via which broadcasters, cable operators and others can report the status of their communications capabilities and "situational awareness." The FCC announced Friday the system had been triggered.

The FCC released its first update Saturday.

A total of 320 cell cites were out, up from 315 on Saturday, representing 4.1% of the sites in the affected areas of Texas.

There were 148,565 cable subs without service, but that was actually fewer than the 149,909 that lacked service as of Saturday.

The FCC said a total of nine radio stations had been knocked off the air, up from five on Saturday.

The FCC said that still no TVstations reported being out of service, though it also cautioned that the report was only a snapshot of a fast-evolving situation.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.